


Everything A Big Bad Wolf Could Want

by Mix Stitch (Synph)



Category: Original Work, Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Fairy Tales, M/M, Prostitution, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synph/pseuds/Mix%20Stitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are wolves in the forest around the village, but there are other creatures as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything A Big Bad Wolf Could Want

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an experiment in queering fairy tales and having more gender representations and characters of color.

My mother kissed me on the forehead before I left our village.

Waking up early on one cold winter morning, I did not know then that it would be the very last time that I would see my mother’s smiling face and her dark eyes. And I did not know then that I would be so glad to go.

“Stay on the path,” she said in a soft voice as she framed my face with her long fingers and leaned in close until she was almost cradling me. “No matter what you see or hear, my son. Stay on the path.” She kissed me on the forehead, a brief touch of her made-up lips that felt like a brand, and then stepped aside as I went to gather the pack carrying my things for the market and my ride there.

I offered my mother a smile before I turned in the direction of the door and my waiting horse and then frowned when the smile wasn’t returned. “Mother,” I said, noticing for the first time how my mother’s eyes were filled with worry and fine lines seemed etched into the deep brown of her soft skin. “Why are you acting so strange? It’s just a trip to the next town; Father must have ridden along that path a hundred times before he died.”

At the mention my father’s untimely passing, the look in my mother’s eyes became one of muted sadness and she gathered me up in a tight embrace that left me shaking. When she pulled away, I could feel it resonate through my soul. This was not just a physical removal of my mother’s presence. It was something else —something permanent.

And it stung worse than any head first trip into the stinging nettles behind our small house.

“Mother, I—” Before I could finish speaking, my mother gestured towards the front door with one long arm extended imperiously. She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t touch me. I frowned and reached for my mother the way that I would when I was a little boy that barely reached her knee. “I’ll be back before you know it, Mother—”

And again my mother rebuffed me, cutting me off stepping backwards until her back brushed the wall opposite the front door. “Leave, Altan,” she said in a tone of voice that I had never heard her use for anyone except for the scavengers that would ransack our village every few years. Fear hung heavy in the air to the point where I could almost smell it.

“Go,” my mother insisted as she lifted one hand to cover her face. “Go and take that damned red coat with you.” She stared at me with dark eyes filled with something accusing and fearful at the same and I felt something inside of me snap.

My lip curled.

My eyes went narrow.

I snatched the fur cloak from where it was draped over the arm of a chair and then turned to face my mother as the crimson fur swirled around my broadening shoulders. I was tall enough to tower over my mother’s slight frame, but still too small to be of any use to the field hands in out village. Rather, I wasn’t of any use except for one. And my mother could never get over the fact that her only son was better known in their small community for taking the farmers’ sons to bed for a few gold coins than anything else. The cloak was a gift from a generous lover, but it marked me as something that brought shame to our family.

“You never will forgive me for what I did to keep us alive, will you, Mother?” I didn’t wait for an answer, the set of my mother’s mouth and the look that she gave my cloak when she thought that I wasn’t looking spoke _volumes_. “You don’t _want_ me to come back, do you?”

My mother glanced away rather than meet my eyes. “Your bed will always be here,” she muttered, already turning away from me. “I _do_ love you, Altan. I just—”

I could feel my lip curling and I looked away, heading to the door before my mother could continue to crush my heart with her words. “I won’t be back,” I announced in a tone loud enough that my younger sisters could no doubt hear from their shared room. The steps from my booted feet sounded loud on the packed dirt in front of our house and I focused on that sound —on that crunching underfoot— because the alternative would be to rage at my mother for her mistreatment.

“Rent my room out,” I called out over my shoulder as I reached the patch of dry brown grass where my little horse was grazing. “It won’t get you as much money as you’re used to, but you don’t have another son to sell out.”

It was a cruel jab at my mother.

But I was a cruel child then and it pleased me to hear her choked off cry ring through the air as I swung my leg up and moved to sit astride my horse. The neighbors were watching through their fences and that pleased me as well. My mother was ashamed of me back then and I swore that I would give her something to be ashamed of.

I made sure that the sound of my laughter lingered in the air as my horse and I trotted off towards the wintry forest path.

If I had known better then, perhaps I would have rushed back home and begged for forgiveness from my mother. But I hadn’t known better, and I didn’t ever return to my mother’s house again.

* * *

I heard the howling after an hour of traveling.

I was a child of forests and dense woodlands; of course I was used to the sound of wolves howling. I was used to them killing my people as well, and to the way that the young hunters in our village would go out on a hunt and return bloody and injured with the carcasses of dead wolves in their arms.

My cloak was made out of fur from such a hunt and my fingers gripped the sides of it tightly as my horse trudged along underneath the trees. The wolves probably wouldn’t be able to smell the remnants of their former pack mates underneath all of the dyes used to color the fur.

However, they could probably smell my horse and I as we picked our way over the rocks and snowy clumps of grass. I didn’t feel true fear then as my horse took its time, but I know now that I should have.

I swallowed nervously a few minutes as the sound of howling came closer and tugged on the reigns in my hand. “Go faster,” I commanded my nameless horse —another gift that I had earned in the days previous— in as imperious a tone as I could as I gently nudged it forward with my knees. “I’ll find you a nice carrot if you get us to the rest stop.”

My horse stalled in the snow, ears flattening close to its tawny head. It was afraid and I could feel it trembling between my legs.

“Move,” I hissed, kneeing the horse harder than I felt comfortable doing when it turned and tried to retreat with me on its back. The nearing sound of wolves spurred me on and I briefly entertained the thought of climbing off of my horse and making my way on foot before I came to my senses. Wolves might kill me faster, but the cold would do me in as well. “It’s only a little far off.”

After a moment of cajoling and coaxing, my horse finally started to walk again, trotting over the ground at a fast clip that bounced me on its back as I tucked myself close and ducked down to avoid being hit in the face with the branches overhead. We were finally going fast and I breathed a sigh of relief in my horse’s golden mane as the trees whipped by in a blur.

We could make it.

We would make it.

We—

Suddenly, my horse reared up on its back legs and nearly threw me to the ground. I only managed to stay on by wrapping my arms around its neck and holding on as my cloak flew over the top of my head. It made a loud, frightened noise and pranced backwards as soon as it was able, continuing to try to turn back.

Thanks to the hood pulled down over my head, I couldn’t see what was keeping my horse from making a retreat at first, but then I managed to push the hood off of my head and I wished that I hadn’t.

We were surrounded by no less than a dozen wolves and men that looked like wolves with their jagged teeth and matted hair. Dark fur, pale skin, red hair. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that I had barely left my house before being made into a lunch for hungry animals. I scowled and then tried to reach for the knife I kept within the confines of my cloak’s interior.

I barely had time to close my fingers around the carved hilt before there were long white fingers curling around my wrist. When I looked up at my current captor’s face, I was surprised by what I saw: wolf’s eyes in an angular human face surrounded by pale hair that was still darker than his luminous skin. I shuddered and tried to pull away from that strong grip.

“Let me go,” I hissed in the common tongue as the strange man tried to tug me off of my frightened horse’s back. “I don’t want any trouble.” But what trouble could I offer a man that towered over me while I sat astride a horse’s back?

The man pulled at my wrist again and the wolves around me growled in unison as though daring me to argue with their leader again.

I opened my mouth to say something, but the man laid one finger across my lips.

“Do not talk,” he ordered, voice rough as it shaped the common tongue. “My friends are not as kind as I. They want the horse and you would be wise to give it to them lest they decide that you’ll be a better meal.”

He tugged at my wrist again and this time I obeyed, sliding off of my horse’s back and pulling my cloak up around my shoulders as the man pulled me in against his side. The man’s arm shot out and he reached for the pack that contained my supplies just as the wolves and feral men around us made for my horse with hungry eyes gleaming.

I don’t know how long I would have stood there, silently staring in horror as my horse was taken down and killed in front of me, if not for the white-haired man. He shifted my pack over his back and then pulled me off of the main path into the forest itself, ignoring my protests as the sound of my horse’s death knell echoed through the forest.

“Where are we going,” I asked once the sound of the feeding wolves fades away and I could breathe again without choking on the coppery smell of fresh blood. We were stopped in a dense gathering of trees and I leaned back against one of them so that I had some support for my head as I craned my neck for a better view up at my pale haired rescuer. “Shouldn’t you be there with them? Aren’t you hungry?”

The man stopped in his tracks and turned to me, yellow eyes gleaming. He licked his lips, drawing my attention to his sharp teeth and long tongue, and then leaned forward until his hands were pressed to the wide tree trunk to either side of my head and we were almost breathing he same air.  “I _am_ hungry,” he growled and the sound of his voice sounded inhuman —although I supposed that he wasn’t at all.

I opened my mouth because I had never learned the lesson of keeping my fool mouth shut. “Why didn’t you eat with your friends?”

His eyes narrowed in a glare. “I would have lost myself in the hunger,” he said as I stared up at him with my mouth hanging open unattractively. “I would have finished your horse and then decided to have you for afters.” His breath fanned out across my face and if I had been a smarter child, I would have flinched away from him at the very first glimpse of those jagged wolf’s teeth close up.

I shook my head, still not understanding. “You wouldn’t have killed me,” I swore.

He threw his head back and laughed. When he looked back down at me, his yellow eyes were cold. “I would have,” he promised, “I would have torn you apart in a heartbeat.” He paused to savor the fear that must have flooded my face at his words and looked me over from head to toe in a slow glance over. “Or worse.”

I flinched and flattened my palms against the tree behind me. “What could be worse than being eaten alive by a pack of wolves,” I asked in a halting voice that sounded choked up. I looked away from the man with his strange eyes and tried not to panic.

He laughed again and this time wasn’t any easier on my heart than the first instance of it.

“What is your name, little one?” he asked as he smiled down at me and brushed his fingers over the front of my furred cloak as though he expected that I would somehow _miss_ him ignoring my question. My body reacted to that touch and I felt my breath catch in my throat as my body stirred. It was depressingly predictable, my reaction to the presence of a virile male body and I gathered my cloak around my body as I tried to hide how I felt. “And where did you manage to come across such a fine fur?”

I felt my face burn with a blush and I looked away from those smiling wolf eyes. “Your name first,” I demanded foolishly, crossing my arms over my chest to distract from the way that my body was reacting to my rescuer’s presence.

My rescuer ducked his head until his mouth was pressed to the shell of my ear. “You may call me Valko,” he rumbled as his cold nose nudged the side of my head. “It means ‘wolf’.”

It was not his real name, but at the time I accepted it. I accepted the brush of his mouth against my skin and the grip of his clawed hand in the tightly curled strands of my short black hair. I accepted the fact that I would probably never make it out of the forest alive.

I was tired and cold and ready to give up. In that moment, I would have bared the tender brown skin of my throat and rolled over for anything that Valko wanted.

“My name is Altan,” I breathed, my breath fogging out in the cold air as Valko’s warm body pressed me into the tree.

“It’s a good name,” Valko murmured, lips and limbs lingering against my skin as he held me pinned between his body and the flaking bark of the tree trunk. “A strong name.”

And then Valko pulled away from me and made to walk off in the opposite direction of the hungry wolves. When I didn’t follow right away, he turned back to me and gestured for me to follow him. “Are you going to come with me or should I leave you for the wolves?”

I couldn’t move fast enough and my fur cloak flapped around my legs as I ran after him.

After all, the wolf that had rescued me would be better than the wolves waiting to eat me.

Or so I thought.


End file.
